


those desert nights (seem so long ago)

by Snickerdoodles143



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Fix-It, Jedi Training (Star Wars), Sith Code, Tatooine Slave Culture, The Force, Time Travel, Young Anakin Skywalker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:21:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22039975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickerdoodles143/pseuds/Snickerdoodles143
Summary: In 5 ABY Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker walk into the Tatooine desert under a starry dark night. They walk out to a clear yellow-sun, blue-sky, 46 years earlier, in time to save the galaxy. Fate has always had the strongest claim to the Skywalker blood.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 71
Kudos: 507





	1. Prologue

It began the night Han returned from the Liberation of Kashyyyk. 

They’d celebrated on amethyst colored Corellian whiskey and Spice Runner’s fresher wine until they were too oh-be-joyful to walk, stumbling into the Falcon’s hanger; Han’s low voice and rumbled laughter as Leia tripped against the side of a berth, Leia’s curses mingled with- _kriff, sweetheart_ \- as she scratched her nails against bare skin and coarse dark hair, pulling at his vest, his hair, his mouth. 

It was later, when Leia lay awake, her legs tangled loosely with Han’s and their body’s a foot apart on soft viscose sheets, that she felt too warm. She flattened her palms over her abdomen and wondered what it would feel like in a few months- when her stomach was no longer flat, something half-her, half-Han, maybe a little girl named Jaina or a sweet boy who answered to Bail- growing slowly, safely, strong. 

Leia would never claim to have Luke’s understanding of the force, nor did she want it. His grasp of the minute intricacies of the why, the where, the force led was so jarringly dangerous; how do you keep on this side of the street between dark and light, Luke? 

Luke tried to count the little candle lights of each sentients force presence. The billions and trillions, every light in the galaxy, he felt them so profoundly: who they were and what they wanted and how they dealt with the incandescent reality of being alive. 

_ Their lights are so different, there are so many, Leia, _ he crowed. 

_ Too many? _ She wondered. 

And he reached out as if to touch her, stopping just short of her tightly bound braids, as if there were a physical barrier- he never touched her hair, no one did. He described her, and it felt so _right;_ the force wasn’t jarringly dangerous, for once, but attainable.

“You’re so sharp,” he murmured to her, as they lay on top of a still-standing building of the Jedi temple ruins, staring up into the galaxy they had freed, “you’re all white light and ice like Hoth. It makes this serrated sphere of light that orbits you like a planet and spread through your limbs. It looks like,” he trailed off. “Ah, it looks like a throne, princess,” he laughed as she smacked him. 

But Luke didn’t grow up by waterfalls of Alderaan, he hadn’t seen the deep lakes of blue at the plunge basin that looked like hyperspace: still, glistening, frigid. He had no previous comparisons for the kind of cold that surrounded Leia, so he couldn’t quite put words to the image she was wrought in.

Leia liked to imagine Luke’s light felt like the desert sun and the dry planes of Tatooine: light air, no chill, the feeling right before exiting hyperspace when your stomach moved up to your breastbone and the air in your chest _wooshed_ out too sharply. She liked to imagine Luke felt like home, but she couldn’t imagine why home felt like desert twin suns.

Leia did not have Luke’s understanding of the force. He inherited their mother’s sense of perception and awareness. Leia’s father passed his sheer strength in the force down to her.

When she felt a new light burst into the force, small, but white-hot, she felt it inside her chest, thrumming in her heart, and smiled. She shuffled her body closer to Han’s, cuddling tighter into him then she preferred and let herself drift into sleep. 

Three hours later, she woke quietly. Her life was cannon fodder for nightmares, but it was supremely unkind to wake her neighbors stationed so close to her in Hoth. Princess Leia could not have nightmares if she was to serve her people. General Organa could not have nightmares if she was to serve the galaxy. 

She leaned over, kissed Han on the forehead, and tried to memorize the way he shifted towards the warmth of her lips, even unconsciously in his sleep. She packed her duffel quickly: a change of clothes, stacks of republic credits, wuipuipi, the nova crystals she hid behind the headboard in the guest bedroom, datapads, and flimsies, necessities for any proper go-bag. She clutched a bright Aldeeranian pink bag, stitched with the side-by-side symbols of House Antilles and House Organa to her chest for a moment before she placed it in the duffel bag (Mama’s pearl backed hair brush: _she wanted to play with it so badly as a child and hated that her mother said she couldn’t have it until she was queen, but she’d trade the hairbrush and anything, everything, a thousand times over to feel her Mama’s cold hands brush her hair back once more_ , a broken emerald necklace, the set of three gem incrusted ribbons Han had used to ask her to marry him- _“hey, let’s have a wedding, yeah, your highness?”)._

She tried not to listen when Luke prattled on about visions the force sent him, and visits from people long dead, but willfully ignorant was not her style. 

Her nightmare was a vision colored in black and white and blood. A little boy- Han’s dark eyes, Luke’s floppy hair and sweet smile, Leia’s damnable anger, dangerous Skywalker blood- constructed shackles for the galaxy and himself. 

The New Republic would fall, as the Old Republic had fallen, as the Imperial Empire had fallen, as they all fell down, down, down. 

But Leia Organa had been born free at the price of her father’s soul and her mother’s life (He was a slave. Qui-Gonn freed him, but he had to leave his mother behind. They didn’t free her. _And how would Leia rage, how would she fight, if men sought to use her as their “Chosen One” but left her Mama behind shackled. Would she, too, turn her back on all she knew, all she learned to avenge her mother’s spirit?)_

Her life had been the stake larger men in the galaxy had played, without thought to her own wishes, to the hole the distance her brother, her twin, _Luke_ , had been caused in her life. Yet, she carved her own destiny through the graveyard of Alderaan. 

She was the daughter of queens twice over: not a homebound princess meant for domestic reform, nor a supplicant to the corrupt senate. She had graduated from princess to general, resistance was the cornerstone of her foundation, the adherent of her very cells. She would not be robbed of her birthright: to be free. 

Her child would not grow up the slave to a monster of his own making. 

Leia ran barefoot through the streets in the upper levels of Coruscant as dawn barely broke. She skipped over puddles, floated over rubble as she passed women sweeping the street and smelled chai being freshly brewed by a young Mon Calamari. She was stardust- starlight and dust- for a single moment as she paused outside Luke’s building and looked up past the hazy clouds, she imagined she could see the sun clearly. 

She climbed his stairs two at a time and paused outside his door in a moment of hesitation: would he understand what they needed to do? 

Before she could knock, Luke opened the door and led her inside. His duffel was open and overfilled with clothes hastily shoved inside, and datapads and flimsies, and _where did he get two extra lightsabers?_

You see: Luke and Leia spent more than half their lives apart. But, they never needed words to speak to each other. There was a truth in them, an awareness that was steady, lovely, real, and it pointed to their true North. Leia was the steady pulse at the back of his mind saying, _“careful, pay attention, slow down, I love you.”_

No matter the universe: Luke has always been Leia’s.

Luke looked at the blaster hanging loosely from her hip; it was retrofitted many sizes too big for her, but he kept silent. Han’s blaster was Leia’s right.

She had left him a quickly scribbled note: _with Luke._

By the time anyone knows to worry, their universe would no longer exist. 

They pile into a YT light freighter that reminds Leia achingly of the Falcon, but there are no modifications to this craft, and it is a painfully smooth ride. There are no words to say, no goodbyes to Coruscant and the lovers on it. 

Seven hours later, they touch down in the Mos Eisley Spaceport, and Luke quickly pawns their ship off. There are smugglers and slavers and bounty hunters, and they watch them carefully, so, Leia tightens the scarf around her hair and tilts her chin up and follows Luke quickly as he ushers them through the places he knew- “that’s the cantina I met Han in” and for a moment it feels like they’re on a field trip or a rescue mission or a vacation, anything but what it really was. 

They have no plan, just the force and each other. 

Hands twined together tightly, they stare into the Tatooine desert and hear the whistling of Leia’s namesake, the krayt dragon. Just as the second sun starts to set, they set off towards the sand planes, slowly picking through the dry vegetation and avoiding the vendors at the edge of the city, so they can cross into the parts of the desert no one willingly ventures into. 

In 5 ABY Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker walk into the Tatooine desert under a starry dark night. They walk out to a clear yellow-sun, blue-sky, 46 years earlier, in time to save the galaxy. Fate has always had the strongest claim to the Skywalker blood. 


	2. I

The air is hot and heavy; sweat drips down the side of Leia’s nose and onto her upper lip before she crosses her eyes and darts her tongue out to catch the sticky saltwater taste- the first lesson Tatooine taught her children was never to waste water.

Luke is shaking his head- no, Leia- as he gesticulates wildly with his arms. Leia has always been the more composed of the twins; she was raised on front lines of diplomacy in a time where the Empire would kill for the slightest provocation, the barest word out of line. The raised eyebrow she’d once used as the darling of the Imperial Senate to imply that she found someone’s words irreprehensible, was now directed in Luke’s direction. There is enough annoyance and disdain in that simple facial tick to make Luke pause a moment and consider smothering a newborn.

Let back up a few moments,

In the surrounding slave quarters of Mos Espa, slave children play a game with womp rat bone and fallen milk teeth. The rhyme goes:

_One, two, buckle my shoe._

As old women gather in front of a thin, dug out hole in sand and twitter around it trying to salvage the few greens that survived the last sand storm, a thin twi’lek runs past them slipping a stolen ration bar into Ama Nissa’s hand- (her master was punishing her to three days without food, for spending too long helping one of Gardulla’s slaves deliver a child, but masters’ punishments did not last long in the slave quarters).

Old Kanna sings lightly in front of her patta stand, _“Be near me now, as the second sun begins to set,”_ and the words float from child to mother to sister, signaling that the first round of slave checks would start soon. The hired Abyssin enforcers are cruel, and although they have only one eye, they see infractions everywhere. The groups of women break up quickly, and children grab precious contraband such as unauthorized rations and datapads before running into their homes.

In a small, gumdrop shaped mud hut, no bigger than that of the surrounding slave’s modest dwellings, a boy cooks flattened tuber patties on a low stone grill while his sister skims through datapads on Jedi codes of conduct, on Republica laws on the force, on Jedha and the guardians of Whills, and throws out snide comments every few minutes: _“they would’ve condemned our birth”_ and _“baby snatching isn’t just an imperial phenomenon then.”_

She sips at a pale pink drink, starblossom juice- the first thing Leia had done when the realization hit her: Alderaan was still whole, still alive, was cry, the second thing was to special order starblossom fruit to the Mos Espa spaceport- while she mocks her brother’s greatest heroes.

Leia tried blue milk at Luke’s insistence- “don’t be a snob, princess” (and could he tell how much it hurt to hear the honorific in the same mocking tone Han used)- and immediately gagged on the goja nut, dry water taste.

_Three, four, shut the door._

Luke serves Leia her light dinner, before seating himself across from her at the low clay table. He considered flicking some of his water at her, but Aunt Beru’s teachings were too deeply ingrained for him to do so, even now with his sister’s seemingly inexhaustible source of credits.

It was a steep learning curve- living together, living near so many shackled and oppressed people. Leia learns quickly that there is a certain tilt in Luke’s shoulders, a crease in his brow, and a hollowness in his face which he can display that makes him approachable to the slave born (She also learns that seeing Luke crawl into himself like this unleashes some black-lit rage in her); where they are tight-lipped and quick to silence their children around her, they joke with Luke and hold his hands between theirs are they pretend to tell his fortune- “ _I see an adventure in your future, boy”-_ and laugh.

Luke was a free born boy who’d grown up knowing that Skywalker was a slave name, with Aunt Beru whispering the lullabies and stories of her enslaved mother and mother-in-law in his ear.

_And when the moon rises in the East, Lukka, the tides of the ocean underneath these lands of sand, rise with it. In it the slave-born are free, for a moment, to look up and see in the starless midnight skies that justice will be wrought for them. But only for a moment, for the moon is stridently watched by the masters. All masters are scared of the power others have over their slaves: for a mother will love her child more than she fears a master, a brother will protect his sister from a whipping with his own back, a lover will share their last drop of water with their heart even if they die unquenched._

They earn the slaves’ trust slowly. Leia orders more fruit, vegetables and water than the two of them could need. With three moons as her candle, she slips from house to house, looking like a water spirit as the moon reflects blue off her white tunic. Luke plays with children and teaches them the basics of Auberash quietly in between the sets of slave checks that come nightly between the setting suns and rising moons.

_Five, six, pick up sticks._

Leia had stopped wearing her hair in the Alderaanian style, her long twisting loops replaced with a single, utilitarian braid that reached the small of her back, for why would a girl, even a free-born girl, in Tatooine wear her hair in such an impractical style for a desert world- and looking back on it, was Leia surprised that she had been born to a desert slave, for where Alderaanian names stood for an ideal, a concept- _Breha_ was peace, _Tycho_ was strength- and Nabooian names stood for arts and education- _Padme_ was jewel drop flowers, _Rabe_ was musical lyricism- only the abject poverty of all-desert worlds could conceive of names that meant tangible matter- _Leia_ was the rainwater that seeped deep into the sand, a meter below the earth, and pooled waiting to offer the truly desperate salvation, _Luke_ was the scraggly desert plant that grew with waxy stems and edible fruit despite the harshest circumstances in which it was born.

She wondered if the loss of Alderaan- _a loss that no longer existed in truth, but while the planet was there and Bail and Breha were there, they were no longer hers-_ had created a void inside her; the hole in the galaxy her world had once inhibited matched the empty spot in her chest that once thrummed in tune to that of her people. It seemed to fill in quiet sanguinary moments: when Luke’s saber grazed a touch too close to her skin as they sparred and she’d have to wash crisped cloth out of the burn.

_Seven, eight, lay them straight._

Luke is delivered a datapad from one of Leia’s trusted merchants. The _Jedi Path,_ is the premier manual for students of the force and compulsory reading for initiates of the temple. He begins reading, eager to learn about these men and women he idolized. He had worked so hard to restore the good name of the Jedi to the galaxy after the Empire had fallen, and he had done it believing in the inherent grace of the Jedi.

So, when he reads a passage decrying attachment and familial bonds he starts- _Obi-Wan said Anakin was his brother_. He continues and reads the terms for younglings as initiates and wonders who the Jedi were to decide what age someone’s connection with the force began and ended. Finally, he comes to a mantra asking him to forget emotion, passion, and family and his heart skips three beats, one for each member of his immediate family, so dear to him even if they were mostly lost.

And Luke’s eyes flashed with a moment of blind rage, that he expelled so potently into the force, that he wonders if Leia across town at the Mos Espa Cantina could feel it: what was he if not a farm boy on some grand adventure with the girl he loved the most?

Luke knows that the crux of the matter is not as simple as light versus dark, for if it were not Anakin and Luke and Leia’s unborn-never-to-be-born child today, then there would always be another child for some Sidious, some Vader, some master ready to tempt them.

He wonders if the Jedi were truly meant to survive if this kind of sentient distance is what they preached. Would they still hold to these laws if they knew what kind of destruction they would wreak?

But surprisingly, Leia understood, the Jedi only knew what they knew.

xxx

It ends up being paradoxically easier and harder to free the slaves of Mos Espa than they’d imagined.

The twins were always good at killing Hutts, but a regime brought down left a void behind that was quickly filled by newer, greater evils.

“We need safeguards, Luke. We can’t just free a whole society and leave them behind for the vultures.”

“Okay, so let’s make safeguards,” Luke replies as reasonably as one can as three younglings climb over him, pulling at the tabards of his robes.

And they do: contingencies for if they fail to take the palace, the types of immediate government services needed, the people they knew who could cut out transmitters and slice through coding to turn of transponders, the schools and programs for the freed slaves to work for _wages._

Leia understood politics and power structures and government, but for all that her skin did not peel in the twin-suns, and her bones did not become brittle in the sweltering heat- _she was the desert’s child-_ she had not grown up in Tatooine; she did not know that slaves saw masters in every shadow.

Given a choice between a master who could violently detonate a small chip- near their spine, in their leg, maybe their neck- to one who called themselves fancy names like governor or senator, they’d choose the latter, but they would not choose trust.

They enter Gardulla’s palace quietly, a blue lightsaber in Luke’s hand, and a bright copper lightsaber in Leia’s uneasy grip. Luke had been teaching her to wield the saber since their father had died. They started training the night after Leia returned from treating with Grand Vizier Mas Amedda on Velusia. She’d toasted with Han, Chewie and him that morning, laughing about looking Amedda in the face and demanding the entire Galatic Empire- “ _he’s a karking sleemo who sold out democracy to fund his predilection for the company of young boys.”_ They’d stopped laughing when Mon Mothma sent word that Amedda had committed suicide by jumping from his balcony. Leia never could parse through her feelings to determine whether she was upset because she played a part in a man’s suicide or because he delayed the treaty.

Luke put a lightsaber in her hand as the purple sky faded to grey, shimmering in the reflection of the fossilized chomong corpses around them. Luke knew few forms, a youngling in the temple creche would have structured fighting than him, but the twins had fought to survive. Gardulla was not expecting visitors- still, she was not expecting a man who claimed to be a Jedi but fought as if he grew up throwing punches in the street. 

Luke considers a tempered approach to dealing with Tatooine’s slavers. Leia immediately disagrees- part bloodthirsty, part reasonable. There is a particular evil that rests under the breastbone of slavers. That cannot be reformed by kind or harsh words, only violence.

The palace falls quickly, and the twins walk barefoot in the hot sand, with hundreds of slaves newly freed from the Hutt’s palace. There are no screams of delight or celebrations, just the bone-deep feeling of disbelief and relief shimmering like fallen stars in the force. 

It is all done soundlessly save for the twin hisses of lightsabers being ignited. Leia’s little birds control the information passing from Mos Espa to the next sparsely populated Tatooine city. There are no songs of lightsabers and dead Hutts sung that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another short chapter, but the plot is gonna start kicking in soon, so the next one will be longer I promise! Also, I want Luke and Leia to have padawans for sure, but I can't decide if Obi-Wan is gonna be Luke's or Leia's padawan so please lmk what you think!


	3. II

While the joy, relief, confusion, of newly freed sentients dances over the dips and dunes of the Tatooine desert, there is a quiet baby boy with his little sandy fists tucked into his chest, watching the bright luster of his Ama glimmer above her skin-  _ cool, sweet, stable _ . His eyes can see sharply no further than his mother’s face from where his mother tightly holds him. He can’t see the tears dripping down her face, but he can feel the salty lick of them as they fall from her eyes onto his snub nose. 

Shmi Skywalker was not born a slave, but she had never known the taste of freedom. Her earliest memories are the shimmer on glass and spring blossom breezes- she hasn’t owned her memories for many, many figure eights around the twin desert sons, but today she lets herself  _ see. _

And so she soaks- on her back in a pool of sweet-scented water, she’s in a world where water is not so precious that she cannot feel it, dewy, peaches-and-cream, heavy, in the air. There are her dark eyes reflected at her in the soft face of a woman smiling, singing  _ “little gallito, come out, come out.”  _ There are reliable, tan hands held over the top of her thighs as she sits on the shoulder of a man. He radiates warmth the way freshly dried laundry, and love at first sight does.

Shmi has nothing material to give to her son. Possessions do not have any of their own. Instead, she presses her forehead to the baby’s, and she gives her son, this unexpected, unknown that surely deserves better than this barren home, these memories in his name.

Anakin- a baby of the suns and the sands- his name is the moist feel in the air as water vaporizes and the deep breath that falls from stern sunlight and the honey-gold of the tapestry the force weaves of the world. Little Anakin, too young for even a transmitter, was born a slave, but would only know the taste of freedom. 

News of Gardulla’s death spread like drips of water across the sand- quickly at first, before sinking into the sand and letting the heat dissipate as if nothing happened at all. 

Her first breath of freedom is disbelieving, and the second is a relief. The third and fourth are also relief, but the fifth is anxious. As a slave she was an investment, her body was worth a price, her bones could be used to build a palace and her skin could be worn for heat, but as a freedwoman, who would feed her- which rations would feed Anakin? 

Freedom tastes bittersweet, Shmi realizes. 

xxx

Master Fay is a lot like his sister, Luke reflects. He doesn’t dare tell Leia this, as their small home already feels overwhelming with the taste of her distrust glinting off every bite of his paddy frogs and every sip of his green milk. 

But it’s true!

When Master Fay arrived in Mos Espa, Luke felt a whisper of summer breeze and soft lily grass slide across his senses and, for a moment, thought Leia had let her shields down. Instead, Master Fay had arrived right as the night’s second round of slave checks began, and slid into their hut before it was too late for Leia to try to force her out. 

_ “I’ve come to see Castor and Pollux,” she chirped in her ageless voice, a bright smile on her face, despite the immediate look of impending danger on Leia’s face.  _

She introduced herself as Fay. She flitted around their home quickly, dipping her finger into a slow-cooking pot and slurping delicately on the thickening broth, before setting her bag on a cot and shucking her outer robes off. 

And then she reached  _ out. _

Not with her hands, but with the force.

For a parsec, there was nothing, and then it was like an immovable object met with an unstoppable force, and he feels a part of his force presence rhyme with hers. There is nothing but white noise in his ears, and while he is more powerful, this woman feels like she simply  _ is  _ the force. He smiled. Fay smiled. 

Leia frowned. 

But underneath Fay’s sunshine and butter won’t melt smile, she is much like Leia. Or maybe Leia is much like her. Fay does not trust Leia anymore than Leia trusts her. 

(Fay is centuries and millennia past her first steps, but she knows that even age cannot eradicate fear. When she looks at these children, she is often scared. 

Luke is all fire. He is the dance of the flames, the brightness of the white-hot suns, the spark of the glinting wood. The light he is in the force lays gently over the firm, steadfast  _ belief  _ he holds in his chest like a too old mantra-  _ “fix it, fix it, fix it.” _ He was life-giving, but he was also a forest fire, willing to burn the ground to ash to save the soil. 

Leia is all water. She is the sound of a conch shell pressed too tight to an ear, and the glint of sharp ocean floor Corellian diamonds in her spine. She is still ocean waters, but still waters run deep, and dark currents are easy to hide when sunlight glints off their surface. 

There is a voice in her mind that whispers to her- “traitor” when she wonders if these children, these twin sons, these  _ anachronisms, _ will save them all or damn them instead. “Treachery,” that same voice whispers when she feels these thoughts creep up in the light of the three moons, and she sees Luke smile over at her reassuringly as if he can hear her disquiet.)

Master Fay heard about the revolution in Tatooine, despite their best attempts to keep it quiet, and connected it to the movement in the force she’d felt from the moment they’d walked into the past. She was rarely in Republic territory anymore- she tended to feel more at home in the Wild Space Regions- so she followed the misplaced strands of time to Tatooine. When she’d reached Mos Espa and felt the twins’ presence in the force, followed by the bubble of dense, pure, light Anakin radiated, Fay thought to herself,  _ “maybe I survived my last war, to finish it for these children.” _

Now: Luke doesn’t want his sister to be unhappy. Leia is so  _ mean  _ when she is unhappy. 

But, Fay was staying

xxx

It takes Shmi a few cycles before she makes the trip back to Gardulla’s Palace. One of her friends, Fabas, came by the previous night to fill her in on the changes. The Palace was being turned into a head of operations while the rest of Tatooine’s cities were freed. 

The path to the Palace- “ _ No, no! Shmi, we call it the City Hall now _ !” Fabas sing-songed- is well worn.

The first thing she notices when she walks to the gates of the Palace- no, the City Hall, is that everyone feels more peaceful. There are far fewer people milling around, outside the gates, and Anakin hums quietly in his sleep, the sound resonating through her heart as she pats his bottom through the sling he’s in. 

Fabas gently pushes her towards the stairs leading to the entryway and says he will meet her inside, before flitting off to help some men move spare blaster droid parts from the no longer used security gates. 

She’s unsure of herself, but walks up the stairs quietly, planning to search for another familiar face. 

Her plan is interrupted when a young man, blond and grinning waves at her. 

“Hello! Are you here to get your transmitter removed, or to find a job?” He smiles at her with oddly familiar eyes and his nose scrunches. He looks like he has the happiest secret. She realizes that this is Luke. The savior, the freshly freed slaves, whisper about in half-disbelief. 

She thought he’d be taller. 

He’s still looking at her, bouncing on his heels and smiling. His gaze keeps flitting down to Anakin excitedly as if he is restraining himself from leaning down to tweak the newborn's nose. This kind of behavior would set her on edge, but this man-  _ Luke, Lukka, desert plant, pepper sweet taste-  _ feels like the kind of savior one would actually want. 

She nods, not answering his question, but close enough. 

He nods back, still excited. “The surgery is inside. There is a bit of a line, but the surgeons are working quickly.” He pauses for a moment and tilts his head down to smile at Anakin, before adding more seriously. “Look for my sister inside. She’s setting everyone who wants to work up with a job. Those who can’t work get aide that she can point you to as well!” 

Shmi jolts back. She mouths the word to herself,  _ aide. _ The thought of not working and still getting help makes her entire body tremble. She wants to cry and scream and shriek. Instead, she nods her head firmly, “I want to work.” 

He nods back at her and seems to understand the words she won’t say. 

_ I don’t know who I am without work.  _

Luke continues, “Great! Leia is the person to find then. She’ll set you up.”

She walks up the remaining steps slowly after murmuring a quiet  _ “thank you” _ to Luke. Three cycles ago, she’d walked down the same stairs, her body weak from birth, and her knees stinging from when she’d prostrated herself in front of Gardulla, pride long forgotten, as she begged for extra rations for Anakin. 

(It stung a little, somewhere behind her tummy, deep near her spine, as she knew her body was too frail to make Anakin milk, but Gardulla is pounds and kilos and tonnes of wasted food and water and life. There is usually no room for resentment in a slave, but she could fill the space Anakin took up previously with the feeling.)

The entry hall is so changed that it stops her in her tracks for a moment. The left atrium has been sectioned off with thick white sheets and a metal frame. It takes her a single moment to understand that the crying women, children, men, sentients milling around the area, fidgeting (uncharacteristic for slaves) were waiting to have their detonator chips removed. She takes a step towards the sheets, before remembering the man,  _ Luke _ , told her to find his sister. It didn’t sound like an order, and he held himself differently than a master would, but her bones knew the taste of fear too much to disobey. 

There are many women in the right atrium, and Shmi is not comfortable enough to go back to Luke and ask who his sister is. She takes a moment and sizes up the women she can see heading up large groups. There are a few species she doesn’t know and has never seen in Tatooine before, but she sees a Zabrak with light turquoise horns and two Twi’leks with matching amber skin bent over a table pointing at various flimsies animatedly discussing,  _ build a hospital here, No! That’s for the orphanage. _

There is an angry Togruta arguing with a Mon Calamari with pale pink skin, itching at her gills as she waved her arm towards the make-shift surgery area. Some of the women have the same light hair as Luke, but they all strike her as  _ wrong. _ There are other women she recognizes: Old Kya is keeping watch over some of the younger children, and Tyma is watching her husband and a few other men take apart the remnants of Gardulla’s throne and set pieces aside for scrap building materials and to be sold. There are bounty hunters spread across the whole building, their leathers and armor markedly different from the light layers the newly freed slaves wear. 

Shmi is surprised that the bounty hunters and pirates want part of a newly freed planet, but she shakes that feeling off quickly. They were owned by Gardulla and other Hutts- same as she was- but different.

She is just about to walk over to Tyma to ask for the woman who was presumably handing out assignments to the willing, when a big Duros pirate steps aside, shucking his blaster back on his shoulder, revealing a short young woman behind him. 

The girl is about Shmi’s age, twenty years, but no more than that. She is wearing an ecru shift dress with the bindings around her chest and waist tightly done. Shmi would worry about the girl dressing like that in a place like Tatooine- even the free could become enslaved in an unguarded moment. But there is no fear in the girl’s spine. There is the unmistakable hilt of a lightsaber attached to a belt at her waist and a blaster attached to her other hip. 

She does not look like Luke. She does not feel like Luke- warm and sweet- either. 

Instead, she feels burning hot. She looks it too as she argues fiercely with a much taller, lither woman who looks human but feels otherwise with her fairy-like high cheekbones and too green eyes. 

Her feet move without her permission until she is within an arm’s distance of the argument. 

(She will look back at this moment as the true start of her escape from bondage. A woman enslaved does not willingly walk towards an argument. Arms tend to swing out, and palms upraised are not signs of safety. But when her chest beats too hard, and her cheeks flush with the sometimes-tangerine sour feeling of freedom, she remembers those few steps and reminds herself that Shmi Skywalker was not born a slave, nor would she die a slave.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello kiddos, I am back. I'm so sorry I've been MIA. I owe everyone who's commented replies, and have another few chapters lined up so I should get them out to you wayyyy quicker. Still looking for a beta!
> 
> Also if anyone knows anything about like working for a think tank or applying to work at one, please lmk. I just found out that graduating from college apparently means you have to do something AFTER college? Who knew?


	4. III

They’d been sparring a few hundred kuba behind the old slave quarters that were quickly being renovated into homes for newly freed slave children and elders. Fay had been introducing Luke to forms and katas, things neither Old Ben nor Yoda had passed to him, while Leia watched.

_(but instead of the lightsabers that shone too bright in Luke’s hands and sang uncomfortably in Leia’s, they used long staffs of wroshyr wood, for Fay hadn’t held a lightsaber in centuries, and she would not, even for these children she’d pledged her life for)_

When Shmi had ambled, slow and barefoot through the sand towards them, with Anakin strapped to her chest in a deep red stained sling, they’d all felt a steady pulse wash over them: _change, change, change, change,_ the force sang.

Luke and Fay stopped and quickly bowed to each other before moving to sit in the sand next near where Leia had been watching. They greeted Shmi and Luke reached out to toggle one of Anakin’s feet. Shmi handed Leia an unsealed letter, folded her skirt neatly underneath her, and sat in the sand, the five of them forming a small circle.

Leia slid her finger under the folded over sheet and began to read, her lips pressing together tighter and tighter as her eyes ran over the words quickly in a way Shmi envied.

_(to learn to read in another language was so, so hard, especially for a woman fully grown. did Leia even remember learning to read in Basic, or had she felt like she’d always known it, never realizing the gift she’d been given. Shmi tried not to let feelings like envy and bitterness build in her stomach, but it was difficult. those feelings had kept her stomach full on so many sleepless nights)_

Leia then passed the letter to Fay, who scanned it quickly as well, her mood brightening before she passed it to Luke. Luke’s eyes widened as he read it, and his excitement leaked into the force, a heady thing that Fay sometimes thought she could get drunk on.

“Jedi,” he breathed out in an awed rush, “Real Jedi are coming!”

Fay laughed again and leaned over to tug on Luke’s ear gently. “And what am I, dearest, if not a real Jedi?”

Luke squirmed away from her hand, but his smile was no less bright. Leia hated to do it, but she interrupted his happiness with the pang of sharp and bitter anger she released into the force.

“Grandmother, what did the council say?” Leia asked. Her voice was firm, but more respectful than the glare she’d sent Luke’s way.

Shmi shifted Anakin in her arms and then in a move bolder than she had expected from herself, moved and deposited the little boy in Leia’s arms, hoping to calm the other woman.

Leia’s whole body stiffened the way it always did when she touched Anakin but quickly settled when his sweet, blue Skywalker eyes looked up at her.

“They wanted to wait for your opinion. They have less experience in Republic politics. Do you think they should say yes?” Shmi asked.

This was true. Leia’s experience in the Imperial Senate and then as a leader of the New Republic was not something easily found on Tatooine.

“Absolutely not,” Leia said, then paused as she blew out a breath trying to shift the strands of hair that had fallen out of her tight braid and into her eyes. It didn’t work.

She tried again and when the strands stubbornly refused to move, she gave up. Her arms were full of baby Anakin and Luke always twitched when she used the force on her hair- he’d walked in on her using the force to pull her buns together _one time_ and nearly lost his mind.

“I don’t like Jedi.”

Luke raised an eyebrow at that, though his face stayed placid, and Leia felt _amusement-laughter-wryness_ float through the force. Fay began to laugh and even Shmi raised a hand to her mouth as if she wanted to giggle as well but was still too unsure if she could.

Leia furrowed her brow in irritation, but before she could spiral into a rant, Luke spoke up, “Fay and I are Jedi, you like us.”

Luckily- for Luke, at least- before Leia could say something too mean in response, Shmi distracted her by tucking the strands of hair that were bothering her behind her ear.

“The younger members were interested in letting them come,” Shmi admitted. “The elders questioned why the Jedi suddenly care about Tatooine.”

Leia and Fay looked pensive for a long moment. Luke hoped the Jedi had an altruistic reason for their interest, but the women were more cynical.

“For the hyperspace lanes,” Leia finally answered. Fay nodded in agreement. The older woman detested Coruscanti politics, but she understood them. “The Hutts were willing to do business with the Republic if the Senate turned a blind eye to their illegal activities, but they don’t know how we’ll negotiate access.”

“The Jedi are a neutral body,” Fay said, raising her palm in a conciliatory motion as Leia opened her mouth to disagree. “Supposedly,” she added as her mouth twisted into something between a grimace and a frown. “The Senate assumes the Jedi will be better received.”

Luke’s face twisted into an expression that matched Fay’s. The Jedi were not likely to be well-received on any planet Leia was on.

His sister had some _moral disagreements_ with the Jedi and their code. Luke could understand her objections but had the added knowledge of how broken Master Yoda had been when he admitted that the code had failed them at the end. Luke had loved Old Ben. He had revered Master Yoda. He believed in the Jedi despite their future failings ( _that might never happen)._

Leia’s shoulders finally drooped down from the stiff posture she’d settled her spine in from the moment she’d read the letter. “Fine,” she bit out as if the word burned her tongue. “Let them come. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good fight.”

Luke wanted to interject something about anger not being the Jedi way, but the sharp, toothy smiles the three women’s faces spread into, and the sudden press of _yes, yes, yes_ that pushed into his cheeks, reminded him that there was no shame in a strategic retreat. 

XXX

Qui-Gon knew that Jedi did not hate, but he had always approached the Code differently than other Jedi. He felt confident that he wouldn’t fall by simply saying _\- and meaning-_ that he hated Tatooine.

His Padawan looked much more put together than he did, and it was irritating to see the younger boy so outwardly unaffected by the heat as they stepped off the ship’s ramp.

There was a group of four waiting for them, but his eyes skipped over them quickly as he noticed the stunning building behind them. The structure was hundreds of meters high and made almost entirely of glass panes. Each sheet leaned inwards, forming three pyramids, one behind the other, reflecting the bright Tatooine suns.

It was beautiful- too beautiful for a backwater planet with supposedly no economy.

The Senate had requested that two Jedi go to Tatooine and negotiate with the new government in charge. Adi had wanted her new Padawan, a sharp blonde girl named Siri Tachi, to see diplomacy in action on a non-Republic planet, and Qui-Gon was well known for his negotiating skills. As such, the council requested they leave immediately.

While the Jedi certainly had no love for the Hutts that ran the planet, the Hutts were predictable.

The new government on Tatooine was less predictable.

There was very little information from Tatooine since the government had announced that slavery was illegal and any planet that practiced the act was barred from their routes. There were whispers, of course- from bounty hunters that were politely asked never to return and the slavers that had managed to escape. But even the most dangerous of these exiles were unwilling to speak of what had happened on Tatooine.

He went to drag his force presence back into himself but was startled by the incredible pull he felt in the force. Somewhere, near them, there was a force presence so bright and reaching that he was lost in it. The presence was latching onto his and pulling it with grabby, sharp hands into its too-bright center. He had never felt this way before. He had to use the force to keep upright as he centered himself.

He could feel Adi do the same next to him as Obi-Wan and Siri both shifted minutely.

None of the greeting party had moved towards them, so Adi stepped forward to bow. The rest of the Jedi followed her lead quickly. “Chief and Chieftess of Tatooine, we thank you for meeting with us. I am Jedi Master Gallia and this,” she gestured to Qui-Gon politely, “is Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Behind me are our padawan learners, Siri Tachi and Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Despite the polite introduction, the atmosphere quickly became tense.

The woman in the front of their group, a Tortuga with bright orange skin and blue and white striped lekkus, stepped forward and Qui-Gon turned his attention to her, reaching out with the force to probe at her presence delicately.

One of the other woman’s eyes- a girl wearing white bindings, entirely inappropriate for a diplomatic meeting!- flitted to him quickly, as if she noticed his actions, but when he shifted his focus to her, he felt that her force presence was too weak for her to be force-sensitive.

The Tortuga spoke softly, “Welcome to Tatooine. I am Chieftess Pari Kaj.” She gestured to the two men behind her, a tall Durun with green eyestalks and an old human with white hair and a long beard, “This is Chief Babit Dam and his advisor Sanin Ran.”

Chieftess Kaj looked away from the men and set her sharp gaze on Master Gallia, “Is there a proper noun you would prefer to be recognized as?”

Qui-Gon felt Adi release a swift sense of surprise and confusion into the force. The Chieftess seemed to have a steady grasp of Basic, but she had somehow missed their titles.

Ever the diplomat, Adi bowed her head slightly before tilting her chin up and politely stating, “Thank you, Chieftess Kaj, our titles are Master Jedi and Padawan.”

The other group remained silent, but the tension in the force was taut. A moment passed by and then another before the girl that hadn’t been introduced stepped forward.

“You are on a planet of freed slaves and their children. I will not ask any of our people to call another sentient ‘Master’, and you will be hard-pressed to find any that will. We ask with respect for your gender identities if you have any preferred titles.”

Her voice was steady and sweet. Her smile was perfectly placed, just large enough to be appropriate, but tight enough to show her reproach. Despite her outfit and sunburned skin, she stood with the bearing of a Queen, and Qui-Gon found himself wondering what they had walked into.

Adi was leaking embarrassment into the force, as was Obi-Wan. “Yes, of course, I sincerely apologize. You may call us by the title, Jedi.”

Chieftess Kai seemed to find her bearings at Master Gallia’s statement. She gestured for them to follow her. “Please follow us. We will show you to your rooms and you may join us for our first sunset meal. At the second sunset, we can discuss why you’ve come.”

XXX

Obi-Wan had spent his entire life being told to quiet down; even with the thickest shields, his emotions pour into the force like a faucet that never stops _drip-drip-dripping._ So, when he walked into the room Master Gallia and Siri were sharing and sees his master sitting at the table leaking _confusion-unease-desire_ as loudly as a youngling would, his stomach dropped.

“Masters?” Obi-Wan questioned the two elders quietly, as he entered the room and took a seat on the low pillows surrounding their dining table. They’d decided to meet fifteen minutes before they were collected for their negotiations.

“Did you check our room for bugs?” Qui-Gon asked.

“Yes, Master.”

Master Adi hummed in consideration, leaning back on her arms. Master Qui-Gon let his lips curl up. “They must not have a keen understanding of political intrigue,” he stated.

“Or-“ Siri started and then cut herself off. She continued when Master Adi looked at her encouragingly. “Masters, what if they just don’t care?” Siri shrugged her shoulders, her padawan braid lightly swinging back and forth from the motion.

Their Masters seemed stunned at the prospect, but their faces quickly into grim displeasure that Obi-Wan related to.

Everything about their time in Tatooine radiated disinterest. The Chieftess and Chief had welcomed them to dinner, but they were treated as any other guest at the dinner- of which there were hundreds ranging from small children in well-worn, heavily mended clothes, to pirates and what looked like a smuggler that was on multiple Coruscanti watch lists.

“Perhaps,” Master Adi conceded.

Master Qui-Gon stroked his beard before saying, “I’m concerned by the girl they call adaeze. She has influence over the others but seems,” he paused looking for the right word, “cold towards us.”

Siri chimed in, looking up from the datapad she had been typing furiously on, “Adaeze means ‘princess.’ I thought Tatooine was a democracy now?” 

Obi-Wan had wanted to discuss this with his Master later, but when he looked at the chrono he realized it was already time for negotiations.

“There is a force presence here, Master. It is brighter than anything I’ve ever felt,” Obi-Wan hurried to say. He didn’t think it was from this _‘princess’_ but the force was banging in his ears and had been since they had settled into their rooms.

His Master nodded and then shot Master Adi a triumphant look. “Yes, padawan mine, I’ve felt it. The force is insistent we find it.”

Master Adi opened her mouth to speak again but was cut off by three sharp knocks to their door. Siri stood to answer it while the rest of their group readied themselves to leave.

She opened the door to a young man wearing all white, bouncing on his heels. “Hello! I’m Luke.” he greeted them excitedly. Before Siri could respond, he continued “Leia sent me to bring you to the meeting hall.”

They hadn’t been introduced to a Leia.

The Masters nodded and followed him, Master Adi offering the young man a ‘ _thank you’_ that Luke shrugged off bashfully before picking up another thread of conversation. He was babbling about the meeting space as he led them into the second pyramid that was already teeming full of people. In the center of the pyramid was a low fire pit. Seated around the unlit hearth were the Chief and Chieftess they had met earlier and their advisors. Around them children and adults sat on carpets in rows leaving just enough space for one central path to the fire pit.

Obi-Wan must have looked severely confused because Luke leaned over and whispered, “All decisions are made communally. The Chief and Chieftess have been voted in democratically for their two-year term, but every person has a voice if it is a choice that impacts them.”

Obi-Wan nodded like he understood, but he didn’t. There were children here, as young as the crèchelings at the Temple. What voice could they have in a negotiation?

He let himself be led by Luke to the hearth and seated next to a short, tan-skinned, woman wearing a simple blue dress. The others were seated crisscrossed on the ground, so he copied them.

Luke walked to the other side of the fire-pit and quickly sat down with the rest of the crowd. Obi-Wan watched as the other man let a youngling climb into his lap and helped a child onto his shoulders, not wincing once as the girl tugged on his hair.

Chieftess Kai’s voice sharply trilled around the room and he looked around to notice that everyone had been seated, except for the Chieftess. The room settled down into a quiet buzz- the only noise the shuffle of sand against the glass structure.

“Welcome, all.” She moved her palm from her heart to her head and then bowed. The rest of the room returned the gesture to her, and the Jedi tried to copy the movement quickly. The woman sitting beside him radiated amusement as his sloppy try. “The Jedi have come to speak with us. Will we hear them?”

The room stayed silent. Obi-Wan wondered what would happen if someone said no.

Chief Dam stood up slowly. “I am Chief Dam. I will hear them,” he spoke quietly, though his voice rang through the room. Obi-Wan realized with a start that the speakers’ voices were force-enhanced.

The crowd replied, hundreds of whispers that carried to the center where the Jedi sat like whistling chimes, “We hear as you do, Chief Dam.”

A few more moments passed. The small twi’lek girl sitting on Luke’s shoulders stopped pulling on his hair for second to let her voice ring into the room, “I am Rora. I will hear them.”

The crowd replied, more amused this time, but no less solemn, “We hear as you do, Rora.”

Finally, a woman, two seats down from him in the circle, with her hair braided tightly into a crown stood. “I am Leia. I will hear them.”

There was something tight and fraught in the air until the moment she spoke. At her name, Obi-Wan felt his chest tug sharp and bitter, _Luke and Leia_ , he thought to himself. _Why do I know you?_

The crowd responded, “We hear as you do, Adaeze.”

Leia scowled briefly, but she sat as the Chief and Chieftess sat down and turned to the Jedi.

Chieftess Kai looked at them, her eyes sharp, “Speak. We will hear you.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im back im sorry i love you guys so much if youre still reading youre a real one! please comment and lmk what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Looking for a beta!! Hope you enjoy! Please comment, because I’m v nervous about the amount of characterization in this!


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